Lucky Spin
by DarkBluexx
Summary: Having forgotten her history and fallen into a runaway act, Nilima found archery first and from there who was to say it was impossible to live strictly in the present?  OC-centric in fandom timeline, R&R would be appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender

**A/N**: To SBW fans, this is the rewrite. You may recognize this as new and improved Chapter 4.

* * *

-1-

She worked in proceedings of calendars she didn't have and was fairly certain time set the world around in its revolutions—if that's how it really worked—and all of it was under her name. It was all she really had to claim to it.

Nilima only heard her real name spoken in thoughts and knew that she shouldn't have heard it at all. Depending on whom you asked, a name being addressed in your head wasn't always a sign of good health. Nilima disregarded this. The Nations dismissed an oddity they had forgotten in yellowed pages of curling texts and wouldn't believe unless they could see. Nilima, at least, always knew to listen when she heard her name.

The runaway rut settled in at thirteen and at fourteen, she'd turned in any kind of map to the bottom of a rucksack and forgotten about directions and the things people said back in her residence of thirteen years. Because of course, a solo trip over countries warranted full self-discovery lessons in the form of a mind encompassing hubris. She claimed it was living outside of regrets. It was something like that. She carried it on through crooked habits and indiscernible cases of good and bad judgments and stayed clear of boundaries unless she had to.

But Nilima was really just a lot of talk and a lot of stories. Years erased depth in a clean erosion.

There were honest men making honest livings too; they just weren't the same as the ones with bows and arrows and washed away face paint. Neither Kumar nor Renshu ever pretended their methods were up to par with other well-intentioned men.

"The description fits," the younger one murmured low for Kumar to hear.

"The description is vague," his companion whispered back.

Kumar held up a hand and they did not continue, not with his bow raised like that. "Remember the code," he hissed. They did. At the wave of his hand, the formation commenced. A girl—and one who showed more concern in a hover-y sort of sparrow than herself, at that—was barely even a challenge. The arrow struck her sleeve and the youngest one, at twenty-something, knocked her out. He felt a bit bad about that.

She caused trouble only in waking up—and by the fact that she wasn't actually the description after all.

Nilima only thought of an underground lair as prison for as long as the negative sort of word association with 'lair' wore off. And when it did, it became a sort of novel thing. A dark, tight, damp—but _new_ thing. It wasn't terrible once the initial throb of her head wound eased up and the sting of being so easily dragged into a rogue group of tracker's hideout wore off. Their 'laws' and society's happened to clash on issues, so everyone resolved to just stay put.

It was a clear, warm day when Nilima was relocated from cell to room—not that either had windows. It was still fortunate that Mani, one of the pair of non-archers, was sympathetic enough to grant her the change of pace. Kitchen hours may have seemed ill fitting to a girl who never cooked a day in her recollected life, but she was wise enough not to scorn.

"You'll want to hold the pot a little closer to the flame," Mani advised one evening. Outside the cave system, open fires were the best means of getting a meal despite the crick it put in her knee from kneeling too long. She looked at Jai a few yards away hunched over his own separate fire he'd built out of spite. _His_ pot hovered barely over the tips of orange, his fingers a more than safe distance away.

"No hope left for him," Mani said, noticing it too.

Jai was her almost roommate, just one wall away. The hierarchy of five worked simply enough; there were three archer and two non. Kumar was first in command with Renshu and Gorou second and third respectively. They were noble Yu-Yans once, members of the elite and skilled in the arts of precision. Conflicting beliefs drove them out. Mani and Jai were picked up somewhere along the way. Power came from former glory so the pair lived without.

Runaway kids got their kicks from the advantages they could take. Cooking and sweeping was fine and nice and the thoughts that Kyo, the sparrow on her shoulder, relayed said kitchen work was good for her discipline. But Kyo was herself in most senses of the word and if she didn't agree, his opinions must have been foggy.

The first real adventure wasn't supposed to be cooped up in cavern rooms. It was supposed to be about the escape, not the unfortunate case of being caught off guard. Nilima wasn't good at handling terms she didn't set.

_I found something,_ Kyo thought late one evening.

"What?" She whispered out loud, trusting the security of walls.

_A room,_ he thought, _It's stuffed full of weapons with the fire insignia._

"You're trying to scare me," she accused.

_I'm not. I'm trying to help._

But Nilima didn't know much about bearing arms and her captives did. It was no solution.

Unless she could learn.

Jai was left in primary watch over Captive #3. Of course, Nilima was the only captive these days but #1 implied too much importance for the case. Jai tended to not take minor jobs seriously in a rather superficial plight for more important jobs. Mani took over without contempt; though married, he had never had a daughter himself, only anticipated one for some length of time too long ago. In Jai's night guard role—he was a light sleeper—he often caught her tiptoeing outside his door in an impossibly uncanny ability to detect the slightest movement in nearby proximities. They exchanged whispered pleasantries ("You aren't leaving or anything, are you?" he would ask; "Oh no, just walking. I must have paced right out my door by accident," she'd reply) and he would decide to forget by morning. Nilima had enough respect for him not to escape on his watch. Renshu's watch would be more fun, anyway.

"Two hours of kitchen," he told her in his oh so rehearsed second-in-command leadership-ly charged tone.

"I already do three," she rebutted, "There's only three meals."

"Sweeping. There's a whole cave of floors," he said.

"One hour."

"Three."

"Arrowhead polishing?"

He laughed. "Dish duty—solo style."

She scowled. "Sweeping. An hour and fifteen minutes."

"An hour and a half."

"Deal." She extended her arm.

He flinched his away. "This isn't a… a _game_."

She shrugged. "Yeah. You just played along."

His buttons were too easy to push. And an extra hour of outside where she could make out the arrows arcing over grassy yards and into straw targets was easy to get when he played his cards. A dreadful bluffer.

She got into her first literal card games in the homey labyrinth as well. Long rounds strung on over torch lit back rooms. It was hard to see the suits with the too fast lights flitting streaks over the cards, causing lazy eyes, but she thought that maybe Mani, Jai and Gorou could play even without sight. At times she was a little in awe.

She went to speak with Renshu about her planning of accomplishing important matters during a noteworthy dry spell. The first step of her diabolical (a word she never used before until 'lair' started having a familiar ring to it and she realized anything goes) anticipatory actions was to get in a word with the big man—or as it ended up average sized mini-mustached man because Kumar wasn't huge at all. Renshu knew better than anyone how to squeeze in a meeting with his higher-up counterpart.

"You _don't_ meet with Kumar," he said adamantly.

"But it's not like he's _nobility,_" Nilima said; she grew a tad too used to picking word fights with the particularly significant commanding figure, "Anyone should technically be able to just _talk_ to him. No assassination attempts, I promise."

"You'd do best without a smart tongue," he said.

Nilima breathed and centered the broom in front of her, maintaining proper, measured sweeps instead of the lazy hardly caring strokes that caught Renshu's disapproving glare. "Sorry," she said. His eyes slacked.

"Kumar doesn't have the kind of time you do to waste." _Nilima_ knew she didn't waste time.

"I know," she said, "But a minute?" Just a short talk she hoped could formulate into something substantial. She already had a few convincing words to say on behalf of her argument. But really, it was just a few and not much an argument at all.

"A minute," he muttered, half a revolution away from a full eye roll, "You want the world."

She supposed in some universe somewhere, a minute measured a world.

She got what she wanted, anyway.

Kumar played dad in the quiet power struggle that was almost, on some dignified level a familial unit. He was the working dad. He held cards behind his back he refused to play too early.

In the afternoon he paid Nilima a visit and Nilima remembered she still only had a few words behind _her_ back. In a fast thoughtless urge to get to the point, she used them all in one turn.

"Weapons are for archers," he said, his head still shaking as it had before she'd finished, "We don't need to worry about ensuring legacies or any of that."

"But what if you owed me?" she asked, "Guilty consciences are rough to shake." Or hers was anyway, considering it could fly and hover obnoxiously close to her ears and such.

"Would you be better off anywhere else?" It should have been an insult but to her, the interpretation could almost lie somewhere near 'getting it.' 'Better' really wasn't the right word for it. Even spoiled girls had an amount of logic behind a choice to leave the original 'anywhere else' where they belonged.

"Then it's a no," she said.

"An easy one," he said, "Even _with_ the means to supply you a bow."

But she concluded on a second thought that it didn't quite add up. He was already leaving but she smiled. "Yes you can."

"I can _what_?" His fingers tapped beats on her door.

"Supply weapons," she said, "What with a whole room of them." And that made Kumar's miniature brain gears grind away at stubborn strengths. The door shut.

"I forgot there may be one lying around," he said when he turned around, sounding impossibly calm. "I expect you won't damage it."

So it wasn't _easier_ than she expected, just luckier. Once her gain was secure, she started looking into a better adjective to fit than luck.

She thought a lot about solo things outside, as if the outdoors fully signified outside the way it used to be. Common thieves didn't have hearts for things that weren't useful people (in terms of coins and their color, food or a barn) or useful towns, woods and fire kindling. Caves had their uses and so did kitchen flames. She didn't know much about company.

Until company taught about wielding bows and arrows. Gorou knew more about his trade than she'd ever thought it possible for any street merchant or blacksmith to even care about their work. She thought they made a good pair, if archery could breath like he thought it did.

"The original description was that of a mid-forties, foreign man," he said—he said a lot that meant little when her concentration reached peaks, "I find this situation ironic."

The arrow landed far from true—farther from it even then before. "What are you talking about?" she asked.

"The situation," he reiterated as if there was only one in her entire existence. When she gave him a look that wasn't entirely respectful, he continued. "The one we were _supposed _to track. Hasn't anyone told you about him?"

"No." She understood why; the miscalculation was entirely embarrassing. "I feel a little bit insulted."

He grinned. "If it's any consolation, we didn't find him."

"It wouldn't be," she said.

"It should be. He was too good for us. It's nice to know ones captives can be outsmarted. Transferred vindication, if you will. Or at least, Mani and Jai saw it that way. Theirs were captured, unfortunately."

So the foreigner was better at life than herself, Nilima didn't really care. She cared about targets and arrowheads and picking up all the spare ones that got tossed from their vessels.

Kyo got to talking more and more; he didn't approve of such violent sport. And she really should have listened as hard as she did to her new master but Kyo wouldn't give up on her or claim she wasn't trying if she didn't repent her every misdemeanor. It was a simple life, if nothing else. There was something to be said for endless drills to cluttered heads.

"_The vault opens when we go." _Renshu said it when he knew he shouldn't but she thought he wanted very badly to say something of it for a long time—not to give out advantage, but steal away a little more with someone easier to was tired because she was tired a lot after abandoning bed times and senses of time at night. In the morning she could have forgotten all about it because she was good at that. Only, she remembered it like a dream that twitched in your head all morning and afternoon, trying to determine the real and fake parts. Because everyone _looked_ like they were getting along. The occasional dispute among ranks did not warrant distrust and conniving acts of scheming behind backs of the lesser. Nilima liked to think it just didn't happen.

"The way people talk around here is boring and too important for what their words really say," she told Jai one evening while he cleaned up the remains of dinner, "Is it because there's not much of a point?"

He laughed a little and snapped his fingers for her to help with the piled high stack of plates. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, but she didn't really believe him.

"Did you end up here like I did?" she asked after a minute. Since Gorou had brought it up, she'd started wondering how common it was to make a mistake and how much they all must have liked being reminded of them in the eyes of their cooks and back up trackers.

"Yes," he said.

"When?" she asked.

"A year ago, maybe more."

"You should leave," she said as if the notion wasn't obvious or naïve in the slightest, "A year's too long, I think."

He smiled. "I don't think so."

She was left to assume leavings just weren't the same frequent and comfortable change of pace to everyone. She didn't really understand how things could not be so simple, but she was trying. Still, she decided not to question Mani about it, because she never really got the same impression with him as she did with Jai—that he liked being a part of an elite tracking crew.

It was bad when a captive not only knew about things within that would be dangerous outside, but also things deeper within that would be dangerous to those a little less within. Nilima was never supposed to come across a door with a high narrow vent that looked inside a room full of stolen property, just like Yu Yan archers weren't supposed to split from their ranks with weapons not belonging to them. Kumar wasn't usually a fan of bribery; it was too nice to the undeserving. Threats were better suited. When the good wore off, he wasn't afraid to stoop to that level.

_I think they're in trouble,_ she told Kyo in the safety of silence, _Mani and Jai._

_I'm not saying you're wrong. _He was never quite that bold.

_I don't think it was a dream, _she continued.

_Okay, _he thought, _but you need an idea. _

A departure plan was, of course, high on lists of priority. Nilima sat outside the entrance of the scenery eaten hideout, realizing just how similar the inside lines were to the out. Even without a physical roof cutting things off, there wasn't a whole lot she could do under the scrutiny of surveillance. She waited there anyway before lessons whenever she could. Air, at least, was highly literal and very abundant in tangible outside. Gorou was an archer, but she trusted him for his artistic views.

Kyo just didn't like anyone. He didn't like her bow or her handcrafted arrows. He was just picky about everything these days and Nilima didn't know if she should feel guilty or not for not trusting his judgment. It was also okay to listen to her own, even if it was weak or slightly overused, an excuse maker over time. She liked the wooden shaft between her fingers and didn't think it made her a killer or a breaker of morals, what with them being old, anyway. Kyo was terribly old fashion. Nilima was the sort to not even keep names for too long. It was an exciting contrast in retrospect. Some things were just overrated.

The call went out on a Thursday, the Thursday marking the three-week, five-day anniversary. Nilima wasn't a fan of celebrating things by even week increments, especially when it was on the long titled anniversaries that Kumar came back from a long excursion of tracking-job tracking with a trail. Women and children were not allowed to tag along on trails—they made that rule three weeks and five days prior. As it was, Nilima happened to have dirt on the half she didn't like. As if that secured a ticket out.

Gorou was heading the small group and Nilima gave her own two bits on whom to bring, whom to leave behind. She determined it was a good thing she wasn't planning on being left behind without her three favorites—the three she suggested.

"You really have literally no say," Gorou replied to her input.

"And you really need to do something about that mustache—it's getting out of hand." She'd only been thinking it for the past three lessons.

"Grooming habits are irrelevant," he said lightly, "I suppose you want to come?"

Nilima looked at him and he did not pause in stroking the hairs above his lip. "Yes," she said.

"No," was his response.

"What if I could tell you something you didn't know but would undeniably want to know?" she asked.

He laughed. "Is that a bribe?"

"Yes."

He shook his head. "No."

"You know what else is a bribe?" she prompted, "Do you remember how you didn't believe Kumar would hand me over a weapon just because I was cute? He didn't. I could tell you why."

"That's alright," he said.

"That's stupid."

"Really, the spite far outweighs the cute."

She couldn't wrap her head around such disregard. "Well, I tried." And she was far from finished, just easing up.

"Then you're done?" he asked.

"Sure," she appeased.

"So would you like to come?" He didn't look up from his bottle of arrowhead polish.

"_Yeah,_" she said as if it were far more exasperating than it was.

"Good," he said, "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"No," she said.

Gorou was quickly becoming her favorite, if only for him keeping her on her toes. Yes's and no's never seemed so complicated. She still hoped to say what she wanted to say because Kyo kept insisting on the rightness of truths and how neglecting them was as good as lying. If she got the chance, she would say it. It was important, always, to say things.

She found the cumulative store of odd pointers exchanged amongst trackers to be useful. In a real outside, there was something to be said for knowing things, and different things than that of a solo trekker. Looking after your own two feet was easy without worrying about stumbling over the two feet of others, but taking advantage made a clearer step for her, for everyone even, as long as she was neat about it. She could keep up alright.

No one really asked about future consequences; they were all just in the moment. They lived for stacks of single moments and she didn't think Mani and Jai were mistakes at all—they were trackers through and through.

By evening of the first day, they had walked the daylight's entire passing. The sun perched suspended on the gray-spindled branches, dipping through sharp silhouettes. Nilima knew the sun's habits and the wood's correspondence with it. She watched it all the time and didn't mind the monotony. It was okay to be in the graces of a clock. The routines didn't change—they played cards with the last light over a rock in the ground.

"I could make good money off this," Jai said when he won again.

"Exactly why we don't play for it," Gorou said, tossing his losing hand into the middle.

She wouldn't really miss the games, not _that_ much. On ordinary circumstances, she would have slept well through the night with so much walking but as it was, she hoped not to sleep at all. She used Jai's win as an excuse to give up and turned in, hoping they would soon too so she could leave quicker. It only took an hour or so.

But she wasn't as quiet as she gave herself credit for.

"Better yet, I should make money off of catching you and all your weak get-up-in-the-dead-of-night escape plans," Jai said, a finger linked in the rim of her collar at the back of her neck. "I wonder if mid-day or morning wouldn't suit you better, what with everyone expecting it by now."

She just scowled like he could have imagined any other naïve kid to do. You had to start somewhere. He didn't really feel terrible about knocking her out in the beginning anymore, just amused that it was always so easy even when it didn't have to be. Because Jai saw potential—he just didn't see a legitimate runaway act yet. She could have at least thrashed or bit; angry children were much like rabid animals when they were doing the angry child scenario right.

By then the others had woken too. They both saw the embarrassment level rising with turning heads and Gorou saw it too—he understood it an ounce more as he plucked a folded note off the charcoaled stick from the dead fire pit. Nilima watched and stiffened.

"I don't _need _to read this," he said, "I can paraphrase it off the top of my head."

"Try it," she challenged.

"Alright," he said, "Ignoring the bits about swearing honesty and saying goodbye, it says there's a 'hidden' vault somewhere within the lair, stuffed with hot weapons being used as a contingency security plan. The point is, if some angry Fire Nation soldier stopped by and found a trio of ex-Yu Yan fighters scheming against them, these said archers have a backdoor out and a distraction to leave behind. A load of stolen goods and two not-so-innocent looking men left behind would last long enough for at least three to escape and the 'mistakes' get sold out. And this plan, you probably add, is a monstrosity—or what have you—and should be addressed immediately, resulting in mass rebellion and the destruction of a good team of trackers, which, no matter how flawed, is a way of life. See, your solutions aren't actually so simple."

She heard a few of her words in there; although monstrosity was a stretch even for her mouth. "You're good," she said and thought it a high compliment.

"An understatement," he replied.

"Maybe," she said. It was trivial, but she hoped they would burn the note rather than read it; handwriting presented a distinctly personal revelation of oneself that she only shared in goodbyes. The script-y characters were better set in flames. Besides, she'd played the note card before, in the room of her house from some time ago.

"Anyway, we'll come up with a decent excuse later on," Gorou continued in his formal bluntness and waved a lazy hand in the air, "Carry on."

Nilima didn't move, didn't understand. Jai gave her a small nudge; he and Mani had been listening the whole time. "Go go go," he muttered in a low mock encouragement. Gorou handed her the bow and sling of arrows. "The sooner the better," he added. Mani nodded in the way of the deeper wood, away from the trail.

Nilima got it and in no such seconds spared for contemplation, she scanned their eyes for deceit and spun on her toes. She was running at once, whirling up a tailwind much smaller than the one she liked to picture in her head.

_You'll owe them in the future, Rayma, _Kyo droned. He droned because he said the same things over and over as if he didn't know Nilima had the endless exteriors at her disposal and how she knew a great deal about the functions of human heads.

But she did not have the world under her thumb.

* * *

**A/N**: Again, to SBW fans, if there are any out there (hi!), Fusa is now Nilima, Gauri is Gorou, and if you were a die-hard fan, you may not like this as much. You _should _like it more, but just because I like the reworking of it, that doesn't mean it's everyone's taste. I would have continued on with Split, but it was getting too monstrous and I need to learn to quit rambling. Of course, this is probably useless because I was a terrible updater and probably hated by reviewers so I'm not expecting many (if any) returnees.

That aside, this chapter may have been confusing as hell. I'm sorry. Suggestions and critique would be super cool.


	2. Chapter 2

-2-

She spent a night in prison once; it was always a good bragging point to bring up with all those other little runaway wannabe scamps. "For a week actually," she would say, "Because I stole a pair of ostrich horses. And after I broke out, I broke 'em out too and got away." Or some days a whole ostrich horse drawn cart with a load of wild oranges, a lavish of fans, a keg of liquor, a finale of cunning guard persuading or outright tackling. A fish story.

It was just one night in a sentence of seven. She'd swindled a slab of hybrid cow meat off a butcher shop and got to running real fast with the unwrapped raw meal clinging close to her chest so as not to lose it. She ran into a boy with a conical hat in the street and when he yelled at her, she told him to shove it and cover for her because the men a quarter mile back were after a free ride if he knew what she meant. It wasn't really logical at all, what with it being mid day and them being soldiers—authorities should have known better subtlety. The boy got arrested with her and after Kyo snagged the keys, the boy was the one to knock out the two guards on their way out.

Nilima didn't have a lot to be proud of, not even in the department of remarkable unrespectable feats.

She thought a lot about conical hat boy when she didn't want to think words to Kyo. He had strong wide hands that gripped ostrich horse reins alright and narrow valleys and ridges of fleshy red surrounding one eye. He was deeply interested in following the mechanically aligned rectangle tracks of the assumed war machine she'd found up in the woods behind town. Hell bent on finding the end of it. Another vengeful. Weren't they all.

She didn't stick with him too long on that and didn't stick to the forest much longer either. Not because a steaming contraption rampaged through it somewhere—just because she was sick of shooting down her meals all day just to get not a lot of meat that didn't taste all that good. The village scene was never fitting but town houses and stalls thrived down there in the valley and there were enough heads around for hers to slip in between the cracks. It was still independence to her.

"Is that supposed to be a papaya?" she asked a street merchant, one she planned on stealing from later, but wanted to know the origins of his hybrid fruit first, "Is it supposed to be lumpy like that?"

He swatted her hand away before a skinny finger could touch it. "_Get your nose off of it!_"

Maybe he liked produce surprises but Nilima liked to know what she was smelling before she ate it. Naturally, she didn't come back to rob the place.

Eventually, she realized, she had to get a job. Lasting over a year without didn't coincide with a change of pace she hadn't planned. Months of drawing circles in trees to hit with hand sharpened arrows and making up new hours for the day, extensions into mornings and afternoons of the next, gave her a good eye for aim. With a naturally steady hand, she just had to find patience in the quiet hours and improvement found her—or rather, she dug for it and it arrived in slow progressions. Nilima knew how to shoot a dinner. She didn't need a merchant's odd arrangements to live.

So why not master something else? And people qualified as mastering skills. She skimmed poster plastered walls for a useful title and wasted the meantime hitching rides on the backs of carts, thieving and rolling dice with street kids. It was an ideal kind of existence, she imagined.

By the adult's standards of decency, Daichi's hair was too long for a boy. At fifteen, a qualified almost adult himself, the things he didn't have landed him a position of figurative center circle in the games. Yun and Ravi and the lot all saw him fit for that to make sure the games were fair because if a dice rolled out of turn, what could anyone trust anymore? Daichi determined if Nilima stayed or not because really they were all clustered together there for the support of peers and the new kid didn't receive equal treatment no matter how many spiceberries she brought to the table.

"Yu-yu wins, Yu-yu wins!" Ravi erupted in excitement when the last kid rolled. Yun barely so much as smiled as she collected her gains and slapped Ravi upside the head once she had.

Nilima leaned back a little outside the dripping glow of candle stub light and thought of how generally flimsy people were. It felt like to her that they said the same things, gave the same reactions every night and it was only ever about the stashes piled up in the middle.

She and Lee hadn't talked at first when the guards put them both away. She didn't give a damn about sullen angst-y boys, all crossed arms and glares. The escape logistics circled her head as she pictured Kyo circling the perimeter as subtly as a songbird could. He sorted through the dirty work like she told him to and local jail cells, she learned, weren't hard to bust out of. She asked Lee once if he wanted to get out of here tonight. And he did more than anything; he said "no." No one trusted a bird on her shoulder except her.

It was predictable—to be misleading.

"You still in?" Daichi asked.

"You think you run me out of loot this early?" she countered, replacing her share in the middle with a sack of mandarin seed that she untied with a finger, "Yeah, I'm in."

Daichi looked like a boy, she thought, not older. He wasn't a brooding character and she couldn't take the implications in his tone seriously.

Nilima only won one round that night but stayed until there weren't any more lights on around them when all the rest split up too. She could hear them all diffusing through narrow streets, running steps and hushed laughs with a fuel source of just stars.

"Where're you from, anyway?" Daichi walked a good few yards away in the middle of the street.

"There." She pointed above the rooftops out of town.

"No you don't," he said, "There's no place in easy walking distance around here."

"Wanna bet?"

He turned his head like he was thinking about it. "You just move in or what?"

"_No,_" she said, annoyed by his typical limited understanding capacity, and pointed again, "I live _there. _I just stay here."

"That's only trees and wood up there. Miles and miles of it—I've been there."

"I know," she said.

He gave her a curious look. They spoke from other ends of the road like no one was asleep inside windows. "How?"

"It's called hunting," she said, "And shooting and traveling and walking and ostrich horses." She looked down at her feet and subconsciously twitched her shoulder as if to hike up a quiver sliding down it. "I'm just taking a break here."

"Right," he said, "You gotta weapon then?"

"Of course."

"Show it to me."

"Too valuable." She paid him a steady glance. "I wouldn't sell it for all your piles combined. It's real Yu Yan."

Daichi cursed. "You haven't seen the real goods yet. I bet you'd change your mind, especially considering you aren't even using it."

"Not a chance." She stopped at the intersection, meaning to let him go wherever he may so she wouldn't have to follow. "Besides, if you have so much to bet and sell, why would you be here on some street?"

He stopped too and grinned. "It ain't about profit."

"It's always about profit."

He shrugged. Half backwards as he turned up the right alley he said, "I'll show you my main provider sometime if you wanted. There's stuff there more valuable than two of your bows."

And a week or so passed and she reminded him of his offer. Opportunities for bragging rights only came by once in a while when everyone already knew what you could do and games of luck didn't bring about many of them. Life was one big game of status matching to Daichi and if he was to believe she'd nicked a real Yu Yan bow off of a real Yu Yan archer (and a part of him undoubtedly did), he would need a good match.

He took her in the daylight to an out of the way hut on the eastern borders. It was actually magnificent in a wood and nail crafted garden shrubbery extraordinaire kind of way. They crept around back, stepping over squat bonsais, to a miniature window that looked inside a storeroom. And Spirits, did it glow.

A glass gift shop with rich little figurines in a display of appetizing hues. She thought it was sad that her only real point of comparison was a fruit stand.

"Worth a friendly coin if you know where to sell," he said, "The old man is overpriced and no one's loyal enough to let it leak. Bad sight too and worse memory."

"How do you get to it?" she asked because lifting from stalls was one thing; stores were tricky.

He coughed a little, murmuring, "the bow," in his fist.

She tore away from the window-sized picture as she rose. "Not a chance."

They kept playing dice and gave up "business" affairs thereafter. No more leads.

There was a night in town that the muggy air suffocated all of outside like it did the night she schemed a way out of her jail cell. How she loved to take solo credit for the act and how she hated that it made her a liar. After Kyo slipped the key through the metal square and she crept across the hall, she lost a shoe to a barely planned throw that distracted a pair of guards for only a second that wasn't half long enough to get inside the door they manned and retrieve the weapon they'd disarmed her of.

Lee was the one to take them out. She'd thought he wasn't going to wake up, was going to let him sleep just to be arrogant when he learned how capable she was at escaping the next morning. But Lee woke up. She could fault him for attitude but it didn't allow enough room to talk. It was she who ran close to edges of streets with one shoe missing in the dead of night.

Nilima didn't go back to the over zealous gift shop to lift shiny trinkets. Over some thought, she decided Daichi was full of it when he made up reasons for not being rich off of snob prizes. No one wanted to buy "gifts" so they just weren't worth stealing. But a flyer with the store's name heading it gave her a better idea. When she went back, she knocked on the door instead.

A tall older man answered, barely looking at her beneath his wide visor sunhat. "My apologies, ma'am, Quintessence Treasures and Finds is closed for the evening. If you could come back between the hours of—"

"I was just wondering about getting a job, actually," Nilima cut in.

He tilted his head up a margin to see better under the rim. "You interrupted my line." He sounded almost hurt.

"Um… yes," she replied.

He cleared his throat. "—Nine and five tomorrow, I'm sure we can accommodate your shopping experience." He went quiet and glanced back down at her before giving a tiny nod, saying in a slow voice, "Now you."

"Oh, right. But I already said…"

"I wasn't listening."

"I'm looking for a job," she repeated.

"Very nice," he said. She waited. He stood, hands clasped in front of him and the silence wore on. She rocked on her heels and Kyo landed on the roof, picking at winded feathers. Finally, "Well, if that's all, I think I'll go back inside now."

"Wait," she said before he could close the door, "What about the job?"

"Of course, how rude of me." He smiled a brilliantly fake wide grin. "Good luck!"

"What are you playing at? I'm asking _you_ if I can work _here_." She crossed her arms and tried to look serious.

He shook his head slowly for a moment before unclasping the door. "_Oh, _I see, I see. You mean _a job._"

"I already said that."

"Yes, but you were being vague. And I was still thinking about how terrible my lines sounded all diced up like that." He glanced off again, as if it still plagued him.

"So are you going to interview me or something?" she asked.

He shook his head. "That won't be necessary. I'm a splendid judge of character without silly questions and such."

"Alright."

"Good. So how capable are you at creating and reciting scripted descriptions of merchandise and store hours?"

She creased her eyebrows. "The best."

"Well, that's impressive," he said, "Excellent, just excellent."

"Then I'm hired?"

"As in, a job?" he asked and she nodded, exasperated, "Oh, no. We're not hiring presently."

"Then why interview—?"

"I told you, I don't do interviews." As if he were speaking to a dunce.

Nilima didn't know how to respond, didn't quite know how to make it look like she wasn't gawking. He leaned in slightly, squinting, and asked, "That wouldn't be an obsidian bead arrangement, would it?"

Nilima jerked her wrist away and decided running would be the best option. She'd only cleared half the pathway when he called out for her to wait. "The work is _inside_. I won't pay you to run around out there." She paused and he nodded to the door. "Come along, now."

She could hardly pass up the word "pay."

Eyvind Nosh the Magnanimous, as he had deemed himself, was eccentric for two reasons. One, for the presence of a last name despite lacking nobility descent and two, for the addition of a descriptive noun tacked onto the end of it to state his "magnanimity." Beyond that, it was too difficult to make a proper list.

As far as important job description attributes were concerned, gift shop hours were determined by the hour, Saturdays were off and room and board plus food was included. The pay was alright. The boss assistant/manager (depending on whom you asked) was a bit of a witch. Her name was Ren and she wasn't happy when she found Nilima sleeping on a mat in the backroom the next morning—partially because she wasn't the broom she was expecting to find but mostly because she was existing in the first place. She and Eyvind had a loud disagreement that eventually sidetracked to the dispersal of shop flyers. Ren, being pro-flyer dispersal, took the whole stack and slammed the door at her leave.

Eyvind barely looked at Nilima when he pointed and said, "You. Follow her."

So she did. Crowded street tracking was trickier than the forest terrain kind where cracked twigs made all sorts of near visible paths. She caught up eventually, though, and realized with some distress that she didn't know what to say.

"Your boss told me to follow you." She didn't remember ever approving the word choice in her head.

"Who the hell are you to think that's alright?" she demanded, not stopping in her speed walking flight.

"His employee?" she offered.

"No you're not," Ren said.

"Well, by title…"

"Exactly," Ren said, "A lot of weight that has."

Nilima didn't have a good retort for that. "I'm good at hanging flyers."

"Good." Ren split the stack, unloading the pile in Nilima's arms.

Nilima pasted papers to walls well into the evening. But it was better than mindless counting and sorting. There were fifty seven red figurines that looked like birds, thirty nine lumpy bangle chains, twenty jade cameos and sixty three and a half gold pins stretching the interiors of Eyvind's living space. Which was good to know, to someone maybe.

So she thought more about her life as a criminal and how crimes made life exciting. Thievery landed her in and out of prison because the same night she'd left, she'd done it in style on an ostrich horse from a stable in the outskirts. Because Lee had one before he was tossed away with her and on a last adrenaline rush, she coaxed two out of their cozy stalls to share. Hence, excitement. She and stealing were possibly eternally bonded by embossed images of small victors. Quite possibly as well, it held her back in the way that she always went back to it in the end. At least it was certainly a fall back.

"Glue!" She jumped, the brush jerked and sticky goop caught the ends of her hair. She found the culprit; he was Ravi, unsurprisingly unfazed by her glare. He pointed this time at her hair and in a smaller voice said, "Glue…"

"Yeah," she said, "Good call."

"Why?" he asked.

"I like to paint my hair in glue," she replied.

He nodded a little. "Are you coming tonight?" he asked.

She picked up the glue bucket and quit fussing with the sticky split ends. "I don't think so."

He pouted a little but not for long before his hands clasped around the bucket and he shoved her out of the way, brush in hand. He pulled a flyer off the stack, flipped it upside down and stuck it to the wall. He smiled. She caught herself copying it.

He swore, not unlike she'd heard Daichi do and said, "_That's_ a good flyer."

"It's wonderful," she said. She picked up the flyers and glue and started to leave. "I'll see you around."

"Bye." He waved.

At Eyvind's shop when she got back, Ren started talking and saying real things that may have been half important. For instance, she brought up the point of Eyvind's lack of caring when it came to messing with "employees'" heads, which was exactly what he was doing. She explained how they were permanently leaving town in two weeks and wouldn't need Nilima around anyway. She called the job not a real job and told Nilima in so many words to leave, that the salary probably wouldn't come anyway. Truth be told, Nilima had never really gotten snug in the concept of pay and actually having a job in the first place so it wasn't a huge loss and she wasn't leaving. Ren didn't understand that food and board was a luxury even for two weeks because Nilima didn't make a point to say it. Several minutes into the discussion/fight exchange, Ren started sounding too parental for a not-even-thirty year old and Nilima didn't feel like being filial. She left to her closet room and climbed out the window to go play games like a good homeless, family figure-less kid was supposed to.

And before morning she slipped back inside and realized it was easy to get caught up in the comfort of blankets at certain hours of some days.

She was the last one up the next morning, but not by a lot. Eyvind was banging on pots and pans as he circled the perimeter announcing that it was Saturday. She slipped into the storeroom where the main ruckus was going on and took up a broom as was generally expected. The days, as a simple arrangement of hours, ran on continuous loops. It made things easy. Kyo didn't nag so much.

Her ostrich-horse had been staying in an out of the way paddock ever since the woods had spat them both out. And her bow and arrows were stowed away in a ditch by the fencepost. She was no longer such a fantastic compulsive owner to important possessions.

"I set a whole theater on fire once," she said at one point during the relentless trek through woodsy undergrowth. She'd mentioned the rectangle ruts she'd tripped on after their heroic prison break and agreed to point him to the place. "See, there was a rope that angled up the outside wall and I climbed it and set a lantern on it and the whole thing just caught just like that." It was true, anyway.

Lee's ostrich horse was a few paces ahead. He didn't say anything. "Then they cut the rope," she continued, "While I was still on it. So I fell and then ran. They were chasing me so I had to shoot a couple down." Only minor wounds. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"No," he said dully, "I just don't care."

"They basically wanted to kill me," she went on. The made up stories hadn't gotten a rise out of him either.

"That's wonderful," he said, "Look, could you just focus on the trail?"

"I am."

"No. You're trying to make up for a flimsy escape plan," he said.

"_No_, I was trying to make you talk. Because I'm bored and you're boring." And anyway, how dare he pin "false" accusations on her.

"Just focus."

Focus was what he was all about. Nilima didn't like it when people spoke about things she wasn't good at, pointing out all the ways that particular tactic was better than all the ones she had. Or maybe it was just people she didn't like.

Nilima was given babysitting duties later that day. Feeling outnumbered to two females, Eyvind managed a minor scale kidnapping of the two-year old Chetan, a crawling slobbering child who sat around in the storeroom until Ren assigned him to Nilima. And after a week and a half, the situation didn't even get an eyebrow raise.

"Let me just clear this up with you," Ren said after she'd taken the kid back home, exposing, only very briefly, a maternal sort of instinct that was generally suffocated in all the pins that kept her hair up. She was back to sounding superior. "I'm the only one here who's on your side."

"Really?" Nilima replied, "Well, I can make bold assumptions too. You're in over your head." Gift shops didn't make the kind of money trips to Ba Sing Se—where they were headed—called for.

Ren groaned. "Grow up," she said, "The difference is, I know what I'm doing."

"So do I."

"So you think."

"If you want me to leave, say the word," Nilima said.

"I _want_ you to act like a civilized human being. I'm sick of street kids posing as job-holders."

"Really?" she asked, "Does it happen a lot?"

Ren didn't smile at this, just strode off in even steps like a woman of poise would fake to get respect. Respect wasn't really common in the time and place.

But that wasn't the end of it. Nilima crawled out the window frame every night of the last week as she tried to get back into the swing of things as defined by orphans and thieves. Daichi quit hounding her for the bow, only brought it up on offhanded side remarks if he was feeling particularly ornery. She thought he'd quit altogether by then.

"You can't drop out now," he insisted when Nilima called it quits.

"I'm outta loot," she said, thoroughly peeved as it was.

His voice got low with his eyes, a flickering grin settling. "Not if you take that bow out of safe keeping."

And then all eyes glanced hers. She scowled and demonstrated her ability at devising creative curse word insults.

"She didn't deny," someone muttered.

It didn't get much farther than that, not past the silent stage, which drew on in a new tenseness brought on by footsteps passing the alleyway. They always took greater caution in night pedestrians than the mundane day ones. Nilima was only thankful for the distraction as long as the source was a stranger. And then Ren turned to the candlelight and paused. It was too late.

Nilima cringed a little when she felt her collar tug—_her collar_—as if she hadn't lost enough status just by Ren's existence.

"Come on," she said firmly, almost impartially, it was so flat.

Nilima shrugged her off and Daichi seemed to recognize her; his eyes got big and he swore. Ren glared and pointed down the alley. She didn't have to say anything; he just ran. The others watched for another second before following suit. Even with a bow, Nilima imagined she wouldn't get back in the circle again. "Come _on_," Ren repeated.

"Are you _kidding?_" Nilima demanded.

Ren was absolutely not kidding. She jerked her head to the street. "_Now._"

"Hell, no, I'm staying right here." And Nilima sat, like the stubborn little kid she was hardly raised to be.

"Stealing, cheating and gambling. That's all they're good for. Should've stayed in their orphanages or gone home like a respectable person. The same goes for you, I guess." The words fit together all disarrayed to the ear, not sophisticated and poised like Ren's voice denoted.

Nilima was standing at once and wishing maybe, she was just few inches taller. "Take that back," she spat.

"Absolutely not," she said, "You think a few games of luck amount to a decent living? You're a disgrace. All of you are. Mooching off of a senile old man and not giving a damn about the people you share a house with. Spirits, just go back to your own town and leave this one alone."

Nilima hated her for the human treatment, for the guessing game. Her palm met the woman's face in a crack that echoed off dark houses. "_Shut up,_" she said and didn't know exactly why the anger seethed. Words were petty, she'd always believed. Words and numbers and all the things people measured a life's worth by.

She knew she should have quit after that. She knew the curtains in previously sleeping houses were starting to rustle. But she didn't stop. "It was an _accident,_" her voice cracked, "It's not a—it wasn't a _choice._ _And you don't know._"

And she went on like that as she left, not listening to anything Ren said if she said anything at all, going on how she didn't know. As if Nilima did, herself.

It was the night before the move. Nilima found a bench eventually and slept there for the night. She thought about the last time she'd seen Lee, the day it had just rained and rained. Kyo hadn't spoken to her then; he didn't speak to her there either.

The morning air smelled of oranges, a perfume-y variant that musty stores wore, and pipe smoke. Nilima no longer startled at waking up in places that were so metamorphic through the hours of night to day. Eyvind's presence was no more alarming than any other piece of the setting.

"A taste for hard surfaces?" he noted, "How unique."

"Hi Eyvind," she said.

"Your species is baffling to say the least. Women are only _really_ mad when they don't say anything. Have you noticed it too?"

She realized he was half right. "No."

"Well. I have your salary if you'd like it. Ren mentioned you wouldn't be returning," he said.

"She didn't know that for sure." Or at least Nilima could pretend the night before hadn't happened.

"Yet, she was right anyway." She wondered if he was mocking her. Either way, he pulled the small sack of coins out of his pocket and placed it on the bench between them.

She pushed it away. "I don't want it."

"Generosity really won't get you anywhere," he said.

And of course she knew this. Because she remembered the morning she'd found the tracks, the very same morning after the town had come for their ostrich-horse-nappers and Lee had gotten off easy because it was safe to assume he was used to that. For a time she had admired his twin blades.

She reached to take it all the same, but his hand caught her wrist, the same wrist with the bracelet he'd noticed on their first encounter. "Yes," he said as he flipped her hand over, "Certainly not a blade handler, not a bender either. An archer then?"

She looked at him and he let go. "The calluses," he said, "Clearly you're not a merchant."

Nilima folded her hands back into her lap. "I haven't hunted in three weeks. The bow's in perfect condition, though. I wouldn't ask for a lot for it—"

"Boat fare," he proclaimed.

"Well monetary would be—"

"_Boat fare,_" he insisted, "And continued room and board."

"You're moving," she said.

"I'm well aware."

She rolled her eyes, but then it clicked and she looked to him for confirmation. He didn't _look_ like he was in the mindset of spewing random propositions. "I'm a _terrible_ employee."

"Oh yes," he said, "That's why you're paying."

She shook her head. "It's not a good idea."

"Don't care," he said as he rose, "Be at the store before noon or don't come at all."

She watched him leave and thought of how months had made her a good, capable shooter. She didn't know why archery had to be relevant to any given situation, but since she started it never stopped. If she were a good shooter, everything else would fall into place. It was a theology she thought she'd take the grave until that night she'd taken someone else there. Because people weren't supposed to die before they get a chance to say something.

The very unlikely fraction sat in the back of her head; it had the past three weeks. The small chances with the tiny number on top but little numbers didn't make sentiments any less. She was a thief, the justice denying kind at that, and he found her and he died. No complex equation there.

_You'll do well in the city, Rayma, _Kyo thought at last.

_I don't go by that anymore, _was all she could think.

* * *

**A/N:** I promise this is the longest chapter and I won't make one over 4,000 words again (this was 5,000). I don't know what I was thinking. Reviews would be loved. :]


	3. Chapter 3

-3-

Whenever they stopped, she decided it was best to run, because running was determinedly circumstantially acceptable if stamina building was a desired goal, which she said it was. Maybe it really was too. Laziness was a dreadful habit that she didn't want.

Of course, the running was more closely related to the more common escaping reference. She always ran back, but on evenings when the two decided alternating drivers wasn't cutting it (every evening), Nilima was never tired but always exhausted of them. Silent treatments wore an edge in anyone.

She had said yes. In the end, good offers won. Dragging the ostrich horse along (he hated the empty pasture, anyway), she was glad to have him, at least, siding with her. Eyvind was just disgustingly neutral to a point that she went back to wondering if he was thinking there in the present all the time. He could have been anywhere sometimes. The contrasting Ren made him look downright soft.

At least that portion of the trip wasn't the incredible long haul she'd dreaded. They got to the ferry in a reasonable timeframe.

It was only unfortunate they didn't allow running on ferries or their stations.

"That thing's the same as confinement," Nilima objected once their passports had all been accepted—the woman just seemed relieved not to see another forgery or Avatar impersonator so it was a smooth process.

Ren said nothing. Eyvind still raised his eyebrows when he looked at her, as if she were saying something particularly vile. "Well, it's similar, yes," he said to Nilima's remark.

She looked at him resentfully. "Don't humor her," Ren said, monotone, "It's just a boat_._"

"Not a large one, though," he said.

"The three of us probably won't fit," Nilima added.

Ren paid her a glance and Nilima got the sense they had reached an agreement for the first time maybe in their lives. She smiled just enough but Ren had already broken the exchange.

Nilima was used to being the cold one, the stubborn setback. It was generally easy, on the brink of fun and rewarding even. A part of her wanted it back, if only to push the opposing position on someone else because Ren was good enough at her job that Nilima felt almost guilty. Maybe they had both just met their match. Eyvind was having fun, anyway.

The worst part was the same as the worst part on land. Dependency. An old man and his stubborn assistant weren't like parents, but varying age levels within traveling groups gave off a family assumption, whether it be grandparent, second cousin, twice removed great uncle or traveling maid. People played guessing games of sorts on the close proximity lives of total strangers. Nilima was surprised to realize she didn't like it.

She also noticed Eyvind never asked if her parents were alright with the trip. Apparently it was acceptable to assume every little thief girl on corners of intersections was an orphan up for grabs. It was an easy answer, false or not.

The railing looked out on an old sunset she'd seen a hundred times before. After a good long hour of herding on board and scrambling for dibs on rooms and spots on the deck, the buzz had dulled to a low hum in the din of late afternoon. Nilima had only ever been on a boat once before in her life. From what she remembered, she was raised on an island. When she left, it was a simple one-way ordeal and that had been her last boat trip. She didn't dislike the sea, just hadn't seen it in a while. And the wide river paled in comparison, but at least it was water and water had to find sea somewhere in its mobile lifespan if it wasn't going to be just a shallow breeding ground for mosquitoes. There was, no doubt, comfort in moving water.

_Do you remember the beaches? _Kyo asked.

_No, _Nilima said, propped up against the rail and watching the inner parts of the ferry and all the heads bowed down to ground and folded legs; they didn't watch sunsets either. _I forgot all that on purpose and I don't see the point in doubting that decision. I generally know what I'm doing, actually._

_You don't have me convinced._

_You say I'm the cynic. I don't believe it. _Neither likely had the clear grasp on important matters, positive or pessimistic.

_Still, a beach is a good thing, _he thought_._

"Good thing" wasn't the strongest of arguments in Nilima's opinion. "Good things" were ferryboats and food that wasn't too stale to eat. Neither of which were great or entirely substantial.

Without the running to calm jittery hands and feet and a queasy fatigue that could only come from unsteady walking ground, Nilima was exhausted for the first time since the woods. She was happy to sleep better than she had in almost a month. Nothing really compared to it, in fact.

They all gathered around together in evenings only, making little triangular circles with imaginary campfires (although, Nilima was doubtlessly the only one imagining any kind of forest setting and even her visage was weak). She only had late night archer circles from months ago and candlelit street games to compare it to. Of course there was no money because as Eyvind had pointed out, there was no money on the boat.

"That man over there is moving to find more satisfactory canyon squash," Eyvind said, pointing openly with a twisted grin on his face, "Can you imagine it? Canyon squash. The satisfactory kind doesn't _exist_."

He went on like that most of the evening until even Ren got into picking ferry occupants for Eyvind to recite stories about. He had been thorough in making his rounds that day, pulling for good histories and making up filler for the dull parts. Nilima easily knew more about the loose girl across the deck who was as addicted to the pay as she was her trade and the quiet fraudulent colony investors and their family of not quite Earth Kingdom heritage than she did her own traveling companions. As far as lists of things the trio had in common were concerned, not talking about themselves was the extent of it.

The second night wasn't as sound. The rough patches took the tossing and turning to an unpleasant extreme and the long creaks and moans made for restless eyes. Nilima wondered if anyone on the whole vessel was asleep when the scream rang out.

Her room was close and she was one of the first on deck. Where there were no flames or rocky islets colliding with the barge, there was only a single shaking figure. It was quiet but for the few paced footfalls filing in around. The laboring breaths of the unidentifiable front man and his twitching steps backing away, not from the crowd, but from the second man emerged from behind the bulwarks. She couldn't tell what they were saying, but hated the voice without ever knowing it.

And the trembling man didn't seem to move at all but he got to the railing anyway. It registered only as it happened that the second one was saying "no" and the first one was falling over and he wasn't stopping or grabbling for purchase or making any sound but the single sharp breath of defiance, no such struggle before the splash. Nilima couldn't move. The crowd waited for the signal. The man by the railing didn't give it and when a disconnected suggestion of "something for him to catch" was uttered amongst the crowd, he only put a hand up and said not to.

Nilima wasn't the only one looking over the side, searching for a hand or a head and finding only tides. She was the only one who stayed there when a nightclothes-clad member of the crowd detached himself from the speechless useless mob to challenge the order. But the other man made it very clear—_no one _was sending anything overboard to save him. His opposition couldn't rile up a protest; they all stood with shaking knees or disregard.

They cleared out soon and the boat went back to sleep.

Nilima wasn't the one to pull herself out of it and navigate back to her room and she snapped back into it enough to notice Ren shutting the door behind her. She could just think of how dying had to be the most difficult thing a person had to do and how that didn't make it any less mandatory, like another life requirement.

For a second when she woke up, she thought they had reached land. It was an exhilarating moment full of somnambulistic maple trees that passed with a few blinks. Hello seascape morning. Unfortunately, the only difference was the wetter deck.

She decided to play Eyvind's game of people meeting instead of meeting the ones she already knew for breakfast. She kept wondering if he knew the jumper, who else knew the jumper, who prompted the jumper. She could only think of the jumper and wondered if anyone else would jump and oddly, she wouldn't want to not know why. She had to be prepared.

There was a girl a year or so older than Nilima on board. Nilima had only noticed her, from the very start, because she was the only other one relatively close in social standing. She had never heard her speak and she just sat there on the floor with baggy sleeves lying in her lap and a needle threading in and out. The deck was always quieter then, before the sun was quite up.

Nilima sat down across from her. "You ever been to the city?" she asked.

The girl looked up from sewing, shifting the shirt on her knees and looking back down at the seam. "Are you trying to start small talk, or what?"

"No," Nilima said, coming across as more defensive than she meant to, "It was a question."

"No," the girl said.

"Yeah, neither," Nilima supplied. She wasn't smooth like Eyvind. She didn't actually know what she was trying to get out of her. "I'm Nilima." She held out her hand to shake.

The girl placed a grimy shirt in it instead. "Ayama," she said, "Hold this."

Nilima held it as Ayama clenched the skinny threaded needle precariously in her teeth and used both hands to find a second finger-sized hole in the collar. She spat the glinting metal back into her palm. "You sew?" she asked.

"Not even a little," Nilima said. Ren had tried to teach her once. They got in a fight. End of story. "Sorry."

"Lucky you," she said.

"The trick is to pretend you can't before anyone figures out you can."

"Yeah. Sounds like a good solid slacker strategy."

Nilima shrugged. "You make it sound like a bad thing."

Ayama rolled her eyes as her needle slipped and the thread fell through the eyehole. She scowled a little and reached to pick it up off the soggy ground and Nilima caught sight of her hand. A black mark like an insignia was burned into the back of it and she realized too late she was staring.

Ayama's eyes caught hers and sharpened as she folded a sleeve over the back of her hand. "I'm busy," she said with a note of finality.

Nilima didn't want to challenge it. She stood up and realized she was still holding the shirt and held it out almost apologetically. Ayama just pointed at the ground beside her. "Just put it over there."

So it wasn't going to be some sort of huge spectacular friend-making kind of luxurious vacation. She already knew that, though. There had been a similar vibe back in Eyvind and Ren's town; she had never really considered herself a friend of Daichi's or the others. Company for convenience's sake.

She wound up back at the rail where the man had died before the end of the day. It still wasn't justified and she'd talked to ten people plus Ayama and she still didn't know why death suddenly needed justification. Maybe he had climbed back on after they went to bed—what a lovely little happy ending that would make to clean off the story.

Kyo was catching salty breezes and mind-hazing buzzing insects an hour before designated dinner time as Nilima made her way towards the stairs. The upper deck was high, but she wanted to test it and see if it was worth the climb (she despised heights). She stopped however when she heard how loud her feet were on the metal and just an octave below it were two voices, from her two people. She hid around the other side instead.

"I'll just take what's mine," she said, business like and stern.

"Of course," he said, "You're entitled."

There was a pause. "There's no way you'll make it," she said, "I almost thought we would back when we started this—but the _money, _Eyvind. _We don't have any. _And _I _don't have any and if you had been upfront about this, I wouldn't have wasted what I had on ferry tickets and banners and store renovations. Spirits, if you could just leave the accounting for _me_, Eyvind. It's just not going to work at all."

Eyvind's tone didn't seem to match at all, just light and airy as was the norm. "That's not a very positive thing to say to your employer."

A tiny clanging sound, like that of skin and rail contact. "I've had it," she said and it was strange to Nilima, to hear the weak hint of defeat. It didn't fit.

"You'll come back," he said just loud enough for Nilima to hear.

"Don't," Ren said. Nilima pinned herself against the wall as she passed and if Ren saw her, she didn't show any sign of recognition.

Still, she doubted it was the end of Ren. She kind of liked thinking of her as human, but at the same time wished she could have held off until later. It wasn't a good time to get used to the unconquerable humans getting thin skins. At least Eyvind was still with her.

She waited, half expected Eyvind to appear around the corner. He did not so she tried again to climb the stair and just three up, she looked down to find him watching her mildly from the bottom.

"Well, go along then," he said, waving her up it. She swallowed hard and obeyed. He wasn't really tense, just not completely vague like usual.

She didn't look down again and hovered around near the middle of the deck. Looking anywhere but the ground made her stomach turn a little. He was up in a second and approaching the edge to look out at the vastness that was a massive bobbing blanket stirring around the vessel, with stitches too wide and careless to hold up a Nilima-sized stray. Nilima did _not _like high edges with heart thumping drops and scrawny rails.

Eyvind pointed out over the side, unfazed by her or the sea. "There it is," he said brightly.

She pretended to look. "Yeah…"

"I'll give us three hours max," he declared. Land: that's what he saw.

"Did Ren mean what she said?" Nilima asked; she guessed he'd known she was there anyway.

"I found a buyer," he said with the same tone.

"You," Nilima started, stumbling for words, "You can't _sell_ Ren."

He looked at her a little oddly. "For the bow, of course."

"Oh," she said, "Right. Alright."

"I figure I'll work it out once we get there," he continued, "An excellent sell. Really, you should have done a bit more consideration before you let that go. Worth a good deal more than a ferry ticket."

"I don't care," she said evenly.

He kept watching the apparent landmass gaining ground. "Anyway. You'll want to stay clear of the lower deck until it's time to move out. Wouldn't want to get caught up in _that _mess."

"What mess?" she asked.

"The one below deck," he repeated.

Nilima scowled a little but saved the scene making for a better cause. "I'll just hide out in my room," she murmured as she made for the stairs.

"Our little suicide friend seems to have caused quite the bout of drama—to put it lightly," he said. He shouldn't have put it lightly, she thought.

"How so?" she asked.

"You remember the pleasant little family of Earth Kingdom infiltrating frauds? A partner of theirs was the victim last night. A slave trade gone awry, in so many words. The second man was the young slave's father. No one really anticipates these kinds of encounters, do they?"

Nilima presumed a lot of encounters were the kind people didn't want. The word just seemed to allude to all kinds of bad surprises. "I'll see you when we get there," she said, gripping the stairwell rail with relief to touch something sturdy. He didn't say anything else and she climbed down.

She stood on her toes to spot the skinny sliver of gray-brown rising up over the ocean. Eyvind was right about the city. By technical terms, Nilima had never seen a real city before, nothing so landscape carving or architecturally magnificent. It seemed too close then to take too much heed in Eyvind's heads up. If a fight was going to happen, it would have been done by then and everyone would be lining up on the deck to watch it arrive or deep in their rooms making sure their belongings were accounted for.

But no one on deck was facing the insignificant land mass and the buzzing tension drew Nilima to the forefront. Everyone just watched like it was any business of the masses. If a boat was in any way like a family, it was a grouping of busybodies at their most vicious. Of course, Nilima didn't have time to be ashamed at standing in the front.

It was just a load of words. The second man was there; he put up a passionate fight. It didn't get him very far and Nilima started to quit caring. Maybe she would have pulled for him if he didn't change so invariably from pleading to yelling and then to big speeches demanding some form of justice. It wasn't really affective, just desperate and she didn't want to watch. She took Eyvind's advice and headed back towards her room like she'd promised.

She wanted the city badly by then.

_Metropolis, you think? _Kyo queried.

_Shining metropolis, _Nilima thought.

_More like rocky, I would guess._

_Rocks can be shiny._

_I guess shiny is relative, _Kyo thought.

_Everything is relative to you, _she replied.

He was quiet for a moment. _I wish we had relatives._

She smiled a bit.

The conversation was short lived as a group gasp broke out, the kind of rising and then quickly dying kind. She looked up and stood back tight to the wall; Ayama passed in a rush and Nilima wondered for an instant if she should be running too, but no one else was coming. She looked after the bushel of brown hair, but the girl wasn't coming back.

Nilima headed off in the opposite direction without really thinking about any kind of figurative head on collision. The gathering found her anyway. It was much smaller, tighter and compact, breathing in a mass. She skidded to a halt and backed up behind a beam to get a good view. Just one of the connected busybody union of boat civilian. She wondered where everyone else was hiding.

She recognized the second man from the night before first—the new tiny group called him Michi and he was done with preaching routines. "You'll be tried in the evening and taken directly to the capital from the dock," one of them said, presenting a short unraveled scroll before Michi, "Execution is scheduled for the morning immediately proceeding." No 'ifs' involved. He pulled the warrant away and tucked the rolled scroll under his elbow. "Deal with this man," he told an adherent, but before he could get a restraining cuff around his wrists, Michi writhed out of another one's hold and latched onto the bottom of his shoe.

"Their whole family," he almost pleaded, "All Fire Nation. Arrest _them_, not _me._ They've been takin' our children out from under our noses all this time. Don't let 'em keep my girl."

The man shook his pointy-toed shoe as if it held on it a piece of filth. "_You_ sir, have committed enough felonies for this twenty four hour period. I don't think pointing fingers is quite in your best interest, hm?"

Michi spat. "And you call yourself an Earth Kingdom general," he said.

"Lieutenant, add treason to the list," he said, unfazed.

But Michi was strong and they either underestimated that or had assumed enough demeaning would erase the thought of physical force from his agenda. It really wasn't the sharpest of logic on their part because when Michi's hands found the general's throat, his veins bulged from temple to fingers.

"Ayama's _not_ property." His whole face wrinkled in sweaty skin that was normally close to smooth, maybe even composed and relaxed on a good day. And of all reflexes to dig up in the recesses of her head, the first one that Nilima acted on was to reach for a quiver that wasn't there. And she had nothing to string, nothing to steady and aim if… and it wasn't even her job. There was no if.

The general had a knife and the blood from Michi's throat stained his fingernails. He simply wiped it off.

That was that, but it wasn't any kind of resolution. The stragglers cleared out so fast, the deck had never been at such a loss for words, strangled of breath or movement anyone in uniform might see. Nilima tucked herself away in the sinking hallway leading to the living quarters and quit feeling for imaginary weapons that weren't supposed to be there anyway.

Someone should have been taking action to warn Ayama, but only clipped sharp taps of metal boots scraped the floor over drawling sounds of bird and sea and a large fraction of the passengers didn't even _have _shoes; only an idiot would risk their toes for a slave girl. No alarm had sounded out, but they all stayed in lock-down mode, waiting on some kind of sign that it was safe to get caught in the general's peripherals again.

It had to have been hours. No one passed Nilima's hallway and through the crack of light all the way on the other side of the boat, she watched the water get progressively slower. The boards started creaking again and Eyvind's canyon-squash man ducked into his room, ignoring Nilima, and she decided that meant it was safe. A part of her wished the boat could stay put on the dock and let the general and his men get off but leave the rest of them there to sleep like it were night, the one night in particular that she slept the whole way through. Big city sounded like too much new and not enough comfortable.

She uncurled herself and dragged stiff limbs to her room, but it was just to sling an already packed rucksack over her shoulder and stand back out in the hall to wait for her own two to come. It was a tight squeeze and she found herself knocking on Ren's door after a minute. She opened after another two.

"What?" she said.

Nilima opened her mouth a second before she answered. "We're here."

"Yeah," Ren said and turned around. She tossed a few last possessions into her own bag and Nilima just watched.

Nilima tried for sympathetic, but ended up saying, "You look terrible."

"I don't like boats."

"Right. Well, at least we're here."

Ren shoved the tiny window shut, closing off any kind of outside noise. "I'm not going back, alright?" she said, "Just relax."

At least that didn't come as a surprise or unwelcome stir in monotony, not really.

Nilima just felt like running again. She was sick of having neighbors an elbow's width away, all gnawing at each other's circles of personal space and making the whole crowd dizzy in the moment over their antics and frustrations. It was all just a one-way destination.

* * *

**A/N: **Did all of that business with Ayama and her dad make sense? I tend to terrible with describing situations in a way that makes sense, but I guess even if the specifics aren't clear, that isn't too bad because this topic will be brought up later on at greater depth. Anyway, R&R would be amazing.


End file.
